Scyther's Child
by Niesse
Summary: On hiatus. Full of flaws. Come back later. Or, you know, never.
1. Long Claw's Daughter

**On hiatus while I decide whether it's worth fixing.** Yes, I know that usually means "abandoned". It pretty much does in this case. Go and read _Almost Like Flying _by Starling-Night instead. It's in my favourites. It says most of the things I was going to say, but shorter and sadder and _better_, damn it.  
I mean, what was I thinking? I don't even particularly _like _scyther.

* * *

**Long Claw's Daughter**

_Swords Dance is almost always used by trained scyther solely to boost attack, but in the wild it serves a variety of purposes, from a territorial threat display to a mating ritual._

Safe Hold sat under a tree at the edge of the forest and looked out at her clan. Shining Blade and Long Claw were beside her, resting in the shade, picking their teeth with the bones of the clan's last meal. Smooth Stroke and Broad Wing were sparring together, casually, their thrusts and swings slow and gentle. Bright Chitin was watching Keen Eye's son and Broad Wing's daughter, both too young to have a name yet, as they played together. All was well there - Keen Eye's son wasn't being too rough with the younger female, and she wasn't complaining. Swift Flight and Sharp Fang were teaching Light Step and Long Claw's daughter the fifth routine of the swords dance, move by move. Long Claw's daughter... it really was time she thought of a name for the child. Safe Hold settled her gaze on them.

Sharp Fang swung her left blade diagonally up at Swift Flight. He crossed his scythes and caught her blade on their backs. She brought her right blade down at him from above, and he deflected it with his right, sending her blade sliding harmlessly down beside him and forcing her into a turn. As she spun to face him again, he swung at her head. She ducked, and his momentum carried him round in a spin of his own. At that point, they stopped. "Your turn," Sharp Fang said.

Light Step caught Long Claw's daughter's left blade perfectly, but was too slow bringing up his right blade. She noticed, but not in time to do more than pull to the side and miss his head, instead hitting his shoulder. He yelped and sat down rather hard. "Oops," she said guiltily. "Sorry."

"Oh dear," said Sharp Fang, hurrying over to see if he was injured.

"Sorry," Long Claw's daughter said again. "I didn't mean to."

Light Step glared wordlessly at her. Safe Hold decided it was time to intervene.

"Swift Flight, why don't you take Long Claw's daughter and find some berries for Light Step?" she suggested.

Swift Flight nodded. "Come on, kid." They jogged away along the treeline.

It turned out that Light Step was not hurt enough to need berries. There was bruising, but nothing permanent, and his shoulder plate wasn't damaged. The main thing hurt was his pride. "Hope she gets eaten by pidgeot," he grumbled.

"You're fine," Sharp Fang said. "Stop going _on_ about it."

"I'd've taken her head off if I hit her that hard."

"Stop whining," Shining Blade snapped, "you're annoying me. It was as much your fault as hers."

"But Ma, you saw what happened."

"I saw you were slow! You _have_ to be faster than that! Soon you're going to be an adult, and the females you're dancing with _won't_ be your cousin. What will you do when one of _them's_ too quick for you? You're not hurt, so shut up and do better next time!"

Broad Wing's daughter started to wail. Broad Wing hushed her.

Light Step glowered at his mother and stomped away to sulk. Shining Blade sighed. "I'm too old to still be raising a child."

And no-one thought any more of it until some time later, when Swift Flight and Long Claw's daughter hadn't come back.

"I didn't mean to hit him," Long Claw's daughter said. "He wasn't fast enough."

"You were hitting too hard, kid," Swift Flight told her. "It was only practice, and even when it isn't, you won't be trying to kill the poor male."

"I know. It's just..." She slashed at a sapling. "You and Sharp Fang were going so fast, and it looked so good..."

"We've had years of practice," Swift Flight said. "Sharp Fang's ready to dance the fifth routine for real, and I almost am, but you and Light Step need to start slow."

"Why didn't you go with me and Sharp Fang with Light Step, if you're both so good?"

He laughed. "Because you're too short, little scyther-child. I couldn't reach down low enough to dance with you."

"Hey!" She took a swipe at him. He dodged easily and darted away. She chased after him, and he sprinted away into the forest, seemingly randomly but really heading for a clearing he knew oran plants grew in. She followed behind, threatening to cut him down to her size when she caught him. He slowed to let her catch up as they reached the clearing, but by the time they came out of the trees she was too puffed to press her attack.

"That's odd," Swift Flight said. There were plenty of oran plants, several of which should have been in the fruit bearing stage, but from what he could see none of them had any berries.

"Gust!" a voice yelled, and as Swift Flight spun to face it a great blast of wind struck him. He was thrown bodily and slammed into a tree. He heard Long Claw's daughter cry out. As he climbed back onto his feet he looked around wildly. She was lying crumpled on the ground, having slid to a stop rather than hit something. He wanted to rush over to her, but fifteen metres away was the one who had hit them with the gust - a pidgeotto, with a human standing behind her.

"Gust again," the human said. "Aim at the big one." The pidgeotto flapped her wings obediently, but Swift Flight was ready this time and braced himself as the wind hit him. He was buffeted, but not thrown, and he pushed forward through the gale towards the pidgeotto. She stopped, glancing behind her at the human. Swift Flight ran at her. "Aerial ace!" the human shouted. The pidgeotto thrust herself into the air - and disappeared.

Swift Flight stopped, bewildered. Where had she gone? He saw her out of the corner of his eye, and spun around, but she was gone again. He spotted her again, and again she was gone before he could get her in his sights. She was unfairly fast, and if he didn't know where she was...

"Behind you!" Long Claw's daughter screamed.

The pidgeotto smacked into his back, knocking him over with her on top of him. He felt plating crack, but it barely hurt. One of his scythes was trapped under his body, and he couldn't reach the pidgeotto with the other. He twisted his head to get his face out of the dirt, and she pecked at his eye. He roared and, with a furious burst, managed to roll over and throw her off. She screeched angrily, scrambled upright and then squawked and leaped away as he slashed at her. He missed, for the most part, but he sliced through most of the feathers of her tail, and she was unsteady as she flapped back to her human.

Swift Flight stood up, blinking rapidly. She'd missed his eye, but she'd hit the soft skin beneath it, and it was already starting to swell. The human was inspecting the pidgeotto's tail.

"Are you all right, kid?" he said, keeping his eyes on the pidgeotto.

"My leg's hurt," Long Claw's daughter said.

"Can you use it?"

"I don't think so..."

The pidgeotto laughed. "Why don't you just give up? You can't beat me, and even if you do you can't beat whoever comes next."

Swift Flight didn't understand that, but it didn't matter. "I can beat you and a thousand others," he growled.

"We just want the little one," the pidgeotto went on. "My master will look after her, heal her up, make her strong. Why don't you let us have her now and save yourself the trouble?"

Long Claw's daughter gasped. Swift Flight glanced at her. She was sitting up now, her back against a treetrunk, her eyes wide with fear. "Never!" he snarled. "Why don't you go-"

"Quick attack!" the human said. Swift Flight tensed. Pain shot through his back from his cracked plating, but he ignored it. The pidgeotto beat her wings and flew at him - fast, but this time, to his relief, not _too_ fast. He dodged to the side just before she hit him. She tried to turn to hit him anyway, but with her tail damaged she didn't have the control she was used to, and all she hit was the blade he swung at her wing. She screamed and crash-landed, her wing bent at an unnatural angle.

"What's wrong, little bird can't fly?" Swift Flight taunted, stalking towards her.

She struggled to her feet. "You stupid!" she shrieked. "We'll _kill_ you!"

"I'll kill you first." He kicked her in the face, knocking her over backwards, and planted a clawed foot on her chest. She struggled, and scratched at his leg with her talons. He hissed and brought his blade down across her neck and she vanished.

Swift Flight nearly fell. His blade hit the ground with only a few smears of blood on it. He hadn't killed her. She'd disappeared before he'd killed her properly. He whirled around and limped towards the human. No-one was protecting it now.

The human threw something on the ground in front of it, and another pokemon appeared: this one smaller than the pidgeotto, red, a flame burning on the end of his tail. Swift Flight stopped.

"You beat Topaz?" the charmeleon said, looking around at the torn-up ground, the feathers, the bruised and battered scyther. "Not bad."

"Run, kid," Swift Flight said desperately.

"But my leg, I-"

"Limp, fly, whatever! Just get out of here!"

"I'd listen to him, little bug," the charmeleon said. "You might even get away."

Swift Flight threw himself at the charmeleon, knowing his only chance was to get it out of the way quickly-

"Ruby, flamethrower!" yelled the human.

Long Claw's daughter did try to run. She hobbled through the forest, buzzing her wings furiously to take some of the weight off her leg. Her breath rasped in her throat. Swift Flight was facing down a charmeleon. But he couldn't beat a _charmeleon_! Oh, legendaries, let him not be dead!

"Come back, little scyther," she heard the charmeleon call. "Don't make this harder than it has to be."

She was slow, so very slow, but she couldn't go faster. Her ankle and knee screamed in pain with every step she took. She was scyther, she was tough, she could handle a bit of pain...

The human's heavy feet stomped along behind her, gradually growing louder. She could hear the softer _pat-pat-pat_ of the charmeleon. They were too close.

"There it is!" the human said. "Go on, Ruby."

She stopped, put a tree at her back, brought her blades into the guard position. "Scy..." she hissed.

"I don't _want_ to hurt you, child," the charmeleon said. He didn't look at all injured, as though Swift Flight hadn't managed to land a single blow. "I won't if I don't have to."

"Oh yes, and what have you done to Swift Flight?" she snarled.

"The male?" the charmeleon said. "He's fine. He's unconscious, that's all. He's back there. He'll recover just fine. Are you going to calm down and let us catch you?"

"Never," she growled defiantly.

The charmeleon sighed. "I'm very sorry to have to do this. Remember that."

She couldn't beat the charmeleon that Swift Blade hadn't scratched. She had one last chance. She was too far away, but maybe... "Help!" she screamed. "Ma! Safe Hold, Shining Blade! Help! Help-"

The world caught fire. She choked on flame, cutting off her frantic cry. Furious heat burned her skin, her eyes, even through her eyelids, and finally stopped. It couldn't have lasted longer than ten seconds, but that was far too long.

"You shouldn't do that," the charmeleon said.

She growled, blinking her streaming eyes until her vision cleared. Minor burns sent twinges of pain all through her body. The charmeleon was advancing on her. She slashed wildly at him. He ducked under her scythe and swiped steely claws across her good leg. She shrieked and fell as the leg crumpled. Gasping, she tried to stand up, and the last thing she saw was the charmeleon's tail swinging at her head.

It was Long Claw who first noticed. She asked Light Step if he knew where her daughter was. "No," he said sullenly. "She went off with Swift Flight."

"They shouldn't have been this long. They were only finding some berries," Long Claw fretted. She raised her voice. "Have my daughter and Swift Flight come back?"

The clan realised that they had not. "I suppose we should go and find them," Sharp Fang said. "You come with us, Light Step."

"What?" Light Step said. "Why?"

"She might be feeling guilty about hurting you." _After that fuss you made,_ she didn't add. "So you come along, she can apologise, you can say it's all good, and we can all be happy friends again."

"Just go." Shining Blade ordered.

So Light Step went with Long Claw and Sharp Fang, and to his credit he didn't whinge about it. They followed Swift Flight and Long Claw's daughter's tracks along the edge of the forest and finally into the trees. "I know where they're going," Sharp Fang said. "The oran plants." They sped up, the occasional footprint or slashed branch confirming their direction rather than leading them. What they found when they reached the clearing was not what they expected at all.

"Swift Flight!" Sharp Fang cried, running to his unmoving body.

Light Step looked horror-struck from Swift Flight to the torn-up ground to the brown and beige feathers scatted around. "I didn't mean it," he whispered. "I didn't want her to get eaten by pidgeot."

Long Claw rounded on him. "Don't say that! She hasn't been eaten by pidgeot! We don't know what's happened!"

"He's alive!" Sharp Fang announced. "He's hurt pretty bad..."

"Find some berries," Long Claw ordered. "Quickly!"

A search of the clearing turned up only three berries; the oran plants had been very thoroughly stripped. Long Claw chewed up two and smeared the paste on the worst of Swift Flight's wounds: the cracked plating on his back and a bad burn on one arm. The third she crushed and put in his mouth.

Swift Flight coughed. His eyelids fluttered. At last he swallowed the berry. "Ooh," he moaned. "It hurts..."

Sharp Fang crouched next to him. "Swift Flight?" she said hesitantly.

"Ma?" he mumbled groggily.

Sharp Fang was rather taken aback at being mistaken for her aunt. "No, it's me, Sharp Fang. Are you okay?"

Swift Flight shook his head and winced. "Why did you wake me up?" He levered himself painfully into a sitting position. "Do-"

Long Claw's patience ran out. "Where's my daughter?" she growled.

Swift Flight blinked uncertainly at her. The swelling under his left eye was giving him half a squint. "Um... your... Long..." His eyes widened - at least, his right eye did. "I don't - there was a charmeleon-"

"What happened to her?" Long Claw snarled.

"She ran away," Swift Flight stammered. "There was a charmeleon - and a pidgeotto, but I beat her - but the charmeleon knocked me out, I didn't see what happened..."

"Which way did she go?" Long Claw demanded.

"Um, um... that way, I think." Swift Flight pointed with a scythe to the other side of the clearing.

Sharp Fang was there in a moment, scanning the ground. She was joined by Long Claw just as she found the tracks of a charmeleon and a small scyther. "This way!" She darted away. Long Claw followed, trusting the younger female's sharper eyes. Long Claw's daughter's tracks were uneven, one foot's prints lighter than the other's. "She's limping," Sharp Fang reported. Long Claw growled under her breath. "There's a... charmeleon, I guess... following her," Sharp Fang continued, "And something else, I don't-" She broke off, and stopped running.

"What is it?" Long Claw said, coming to a halt beside her.

"I don't know," Sharp Fang said. "Your daughter stopped there, and the charmeleon attacked her-" The tree she indicated was scorched and blackened. There were spots of yellow blood on the ground before it. "-but then they both disappear."

Long Claw's head whipped around. "What?"

Sharp Fang stepped forward carefully, studying the ground. "I can't find where they go. There's lots of prints from something I don't recognise, and a few from another pidgeotto of all things, but I can't find where any of them have _gone_. The only tracks leaving are the rattata and things that live here." She shook her head ruefully. "I'm sorry."

They searched for a while, but it was useless. Long Claw's daughter had vanished into thin air. Long Claw seethed with impotent fury as they made their way back to Swift Flight and Light Step.

"Did you-" Light Step jumped to his feet when he saw them, but subsided when he saw the look on Long Claw's face and the lack of Long Claw's daughter. "Oh."

Swift Flight was half-sitting, half-lying against the base of a tree, his head tipped forward and his eyes closed.

"Swift Flight?" Sharp Fang said gently, kneeling beside him.

She thought he might be unconscious again, but though he didn't open his eyes, he murmured, "Yeah?"

"There was something else," Sharp Fang said, "as well as the charmeleon and the pidgeotto. I couldn't tell what it was. Did you...?"

Swift Flight opened his eyes, but looked past her, not at her. She turned her head to see what he was looking at. Long Claw was taking out her feelings on some innocent trees. She didn't look to be listening. "Didn't I tell you?" Swift Flight said quietly. "There was a human."

Long Claw stopped mid-swing. "There was a _what!_"

"I agree," Safe Hold said. "She has to be rescued." They were back with the rest of the clan. Bright Chitin had taken Swift Flight sitrus and rawst berries from the emergency cache, and he was rapidly recovering, though he would be sore for a while yet.

"How can we?" Sharp Fang said. "We don't know where they went."

"We can split up." Long Claw was pacing restlessly, wearing a track in the grass. "If we go in groups of-"

"You won't have to," Safe Hold said firmly. "The human will follow the edge of the forest south to the route. You can too. You said there was a pidgeotto?" Swift Flight nodded silently. "Then it will be flying. You'll have to hurry."

"Yes! Let's go _now!_" Long Claw exclaimed. Her wings buzzed impatiently.

"A little longer won't make a difference, Ma," Smooth Stroke, Long Claw's adult daughter, said.

"There are some things you have to hear first." Safe Hold spoke very quickly, as though she had a lot to say and little time to say it. "Humans have a way of making pokemon very small and putting them in round shells to carry them. Long Claw's daughter may be in one when you find her. It will be about this big-" She held her claws a short distance apart. "-and it will be white and another colour, probably red but maybe not. There will be a small place on its surface that you will have to push to let her out. Do you understand so far?"

Long Claw nodded. "Why do you have to tell us now? Aren't you going to be there?"

"No," Safe Hold said bluntly. "This is important, so listen. The humans can... do something to a pokemon's mind. When you find Long Claw's daughter, she may not want to come home. If you kill the human, she'll recover. This is part of the reason you have to hurry, as the longer she's with the human the more likely she'll be affected - but the human will be trying to keep her safe, so you can afford to wait and plan." She tried to think if there was anything else she needed to tell them. No, that should be all.

Long Claw had stopped pacing to listen, but she was shifting her weight from foot to foot and she kept casting anxious looks south. "Why won't you come with us? We might need your experience."

"I'm not as fast as you," the old scizor said. "It's better I stay here with the children - and some of you will have to stay too."

It was quickly arranged that Bright Chitin and Broad Wing would stay with Safe Hold, Light Step, Broad Wing's daughter and Keen Eye's son. Shining Blade, Smooth Stroke and Sharp Fang would go with Long Claw. There was some disagreement over Swift Flight.

"He'll slow us down!" Long Claw snapped. "He's hurt, he won't be able to keep up."

"I'm fine!" Swift Flight lied. "If I can't keep up, I'll just turn around and come back and you can go on without me, but that won't happen. I'm faster than you anyway. And you might need me."

"Fine," Long Claw growled. "Now, are there any other delays we just _have_ to wait for?"

Safe Hold shook her head. "Good luck - good hunting!"

Long Claw was off, the other four scyther following. "Be back soon!" Smooth Stroke called back jauntily.

"Be careful!" Bright Chitin shouted, but they were running fast and might have already been out of earshot.

Safe Hold watched them dwindle into the distance. Light Step fidgeted next to her. "Come, child," she said as she finally lost sight of the rescue party. "We'll go find some berries to replace the ones Swift Flight ate."


	2. Team

**Team**

_Scyther - especially female scyther - are used to working as part of a team. The difficulty in incorporating a wild scyther into a trainer's team lies in transferring their loyalty from their old clan to their new one._

It was mid-afternoon when the five scyther left. They ran without talking as mid turned to late, and afternoon began to turn to evening. Shining Blade called a halt as the last of the sun painted the western sky.

"We can't stop," Long Claw growled. "We have to catch up to my daughter!"

"We need to _sleep_," Shining Blade told her firmly. "It won't do us any good to catch them exhausted."

They spent the night where they were, not bothering to keep watch. Only one thing would dare to attack a group of healthy, adult scyther at night, and the only human nearby was the one they were chasing. Long Claw woke up as soon as the sun lightened the sky over the trees, and she woke the others up. She was anxious to keep going, but Shining Blade refused to go until they'd had something to eat and as Long Claw _was_ hungry, she didn't argue. They hunted, and they ate, and they set off again. It wasn't yet midday when they found the remains of a campsite.

The ashes of the fire were cold, but fresh. If they hadn't stopped the night before, they wouuld have caught up. Long Claw was furious.

"And then what?" Shining Blade snapped. "Hungry, half-asleep, in the middle of the night, we fight a charmeleon, a pidgeotto and who knows what else?"

"An ekans," Sharp Fang said, crouching down and sniffing the bare earth. "An electric-type - pikachu, maybe? No scyther. There's pidgeotto and charmeleon, but I don't know if they're the same ones..."

"Charmeleon aren't exactly common," Smooth Stroke said.

"They're gone now," Shining Blade said. "We know we're on the right track. Let's go."

They kept running. Occasionally an unwary ratatta or pidgey would happen upon them, and the scyther wouldn't pass up the chance offered to them, though they weren't formally hunting. In the early afternoon they came to a small river flowing out of the forest, and they drank and rested for a few minutes before taking a run-up to fly over the river and running on. By the end of the day, they'd seen no more sign of their quarry, but even Long Claw admitted they had to stop. They were all tired, Swift Flight most of all. He'd been keeping up gamely all day, though his bruised muscles had vehemently informed him they needed rest to heal, and he was asleep as soon as he got the chance to lie down.

Long Claw lay awake as darkness fell. When the sun had sunk fully below the horizon she quietly stood up and looked south, searching for the glow of firelight. The night was as dark in that direction as any other. "We're coming, my daughter," she whispered. She expected to have trouble getting to sleep, but she was more tired than she realised and wasn't awake much longer.

* * *

Long Claw's daughter felt as though she were almost asleep. There was the same timelessness, the same comfortable darkness, the same sluggishness of thought and feeling that nothing was really important. She didn't remember what had happened to get her... wherever she was, but only because she didn't think about it. She didn't think about much. She didn't seem to have much of a self to think with, but that didn't matter. She wasn't happy, exactly, but she was content, away from any sort of bodily upset or unhappiness. Time sped past at a crawl; after an eternity of no time at all, it was over.

It was like waking up suddenly from a pleasant dream. The darkness lifted, though not completely, turning to dusk. She found herself lying on the ground, confused and hurting. Her head hurt. Her leg hurt - both legs, in fact. The burns all over her body hurt, which reminded her of... the charmeleon...

"Hi," a voice said. "I'm sorry I had to hurt you. I've got a potion for you-"

She didn't really register the words, but the voice was enough to have her sitting up, scythes at the ready, ignoring the redoubled pounding ache in her head. She didn't trust her legs to hold her if she tried to stand, so, sitting, she glared up at the charmeleon and the human, who was still talking.

"I'm sure you'll like me, once you get to know me." It was holding something out to her. She hissed at it. It bent down to her leg. "I'll just fix this up for you - hey!" She had swiped at it as soon as it came within reach. "Don't you want healing?"

"Go drown yourself," she snarled.

"I'm trying to be nice," the human said. She just hissed at it again, and it gave up. "You talk to her, Ruby." It touched the charmeleon's horn and wandered off a short distance, closer to a small fire that the young scyther only now noticed.

The charmeleon crouched to be at her level, just out of scythe range. "You're not doing yourself any favours behaving like this," he said calmly.

She bared her teeth and didn't answer. She could feel the blood oozing out of the wound on her leg.

"Fine," the charmeleon said. "Don't let us heal you. Sit here and suffer all night."

"It was you who hurt me!" she snapped. Her arms ached. A nastier burn on one shoulder stung furiously.

"Yes, and now my master is offering to unhurt you," he said, "and you're not letting it."

She didn't want it anywhere near her. She didn't want either of them anywhere near her. "Just give me some berries and leave me alone."

"We don't use berries out of battle," he said bluntly. "It's potion or nothing. Well?"

It hurt. She hated herself for being so weak. "Fine," she spat.

The charmeleon called to the human, who looked up from what it was doing and hurried back to them. "Don't try anything," he warned, miming slashing at something. "That human's safety is much more important to me than yours."

She didn't know if she could have attacked it anyway. She let her blades fall down by her sides; she needed tham to help support her anyway. She felt light-headed, dizzy. She wished her mother was there, or better yet that she was back at home. The human squatted in front of her again, cautiously holding out to her the same unfamiliar item as before. She made no attempt to stop it. It sprayed some liquid from the thing on the deep scratch on her leg.

Sweet blessed relief.

The pain from that particular injury just disappeared. She could _see_ the gashes closing, though by now it was almost too dark. It was better than berries; this potion stuff was _magic_. "Do my other ankle," she mumbled. The human ignored her, instead spraying a burn on her abdomen. She could have taken its head off with a blow; it was close enough now and not at all prepared for an attack, but it didn't even occur to her. "No, here." She wriggled the limb in question and winced as the offended joint sent a wave of pain up her leg. The human continued to pay no attention.

"It can't understand you," the charmeleon said. "Here." He tapped the human's shoulder to get its attention, then tapped her ankle. The human seemed to understand; it gave her ankle a good spray before going back to more visible injuries. She sighed. The magic worked even through plating. "Anywhere else?" the charmeleon said.

He seemed nice enough now, but she didn't trust him, with his steely claws and his thick, muscled tail... "My head," she said. "The side. Where you hit me." He missed the accusation, or at least didn't let it bother him. She tensed as he walked around behind her, but he just caught the human's eye and gently touched her head, then moved back where she could see him. She breathed in some of the mist the human was spraying, and felt her head clear.

The human sprayed her last few singes and bruises, and sat back on its heels, smiling. "See, I'm not so bad. I'm going to call you Emerald, okay?"

"No," Long Claw's daughter said. "You can't name me. You're not my matriarch."

"Good!" the human said - proving fairly conclusively, as far as she was concerrned, that it had no idea what she was saying. "I'll get you some food. You can have some of Topaz's, you'll like it, you're part flying-type..." It wandered back to the campfire.

"You'll get used to it, sooner or later," the charmeleon said. "I'm Ruby. Welcome to the team."

There was a flash of light over by the fire. Ruby turned to look. Long Claw's daughter watched him. He started to walk away, and she was on her feet and running in an instant. "Citrine!" she heard him yell. "Over there!" but she ignored it; nothing could beat a scyther at a flat run, and in the dark she'd only have to get out of sight - but she didn't even manage that: there was a rodent's squeal and a wave of electricity hit her. It didn't hurt, but all her muscles froze up and she fell.

"Emerald?" the human called. "Where is she, Citrine?" She tried to get up and run again, and found that she couldn't make herself move. She fought down rising panic. She was paralysed.

A raichu, faintly glowing in the dark, trotted into her field of vision. "Sorry," she said. "I didn't hurt you, did I? I tried not to, but I've just evolved and I'm not used to it yet."

Long Claw's daughter snarled at her, masking her despair with anger. She'd been so close!

"Oh dear," the raichu said. "I am sorry. Come on, come back to the fire and have something to eat. You can walk if you take it slow."

Long Claw's daughter was successful at standing up slowly and walking slowly back to the fire and the human. She had no choice, really. The raichu, for all her apologies, clearly wasn't going to let her escape. The human was waiting for them, holding - another potion, it looked like. It sprayed her with it, returning to her control of her limbs. She considered bolting again, but the raichu was right there and she'd only get another zap. "Don't run off like that, Emerald," the human said. "I don't have a lot of parlyz heals, and I shouldn't have to be unparalysing you." It patted her. She moved her head away. "I've put some food out for you." It sounded hurt. Ruby gave her a _look_. She ignored them both.

"I'm not hungry," she said, sitting down where she was.

The human shrugged and did something and there were two more flashes of light that resolved themselves into an ekans and a pidgeotto. The ekans glanced around briefly, paid no attention to the young scyther, and slithered over to a row of bowls on the ground. The pidgeotto looked around too, and saw Long Claw's daughter. "You _did_ get her. Well done, Ruby."

Swift Flight had broken the pidgeotto's wing - snapped the bone clean through. She'd seen the angle it made, bent back on itself. This was the same pidgeotto, and yet it couldn't be! This pidgeotto was stretching undamaged, perfect wings and folding them back up without the slightest hint of injury. She remembered the potion, reforming muscle and skin and chitin like the wounds had never existed. Wing-bone broken... in the wild, that pidgeotto would have died. She caught herself staring and stopped before the pidgeotto noticed.

"What's she like, then?" the pidgeotto said.

"At the moment, she's sulking," Ruby said clearly, his voice carrying beautifully. "Citrine stopped her running away. Her name's Emerald." He beckoned to her. "Come here, Emerald."

She was still scared of Ruby, so she did as he told her. The pidgeotto was bigger up close than she'd seemed fighting Swift Flight, and it made the bug in the scyther nervous.

"This is Topaz," Ruby said. "That's Amethyst over there," - the ekans didn't even look up - "and Citrine. Topaz, Citrine, Thyst - this is Emerald."

"My name's not _Emerald_," she said defiantly.

Ruby sighed. Topaz cocked her head. "What is it then, little bug?"

"I-I don't have a name yet," she admitted. "I wasn't old enough..."

"We have to call you something," Citrine reasoned. "Why not Emerald?"

Why not? Because the human had chosen it. Because it should be Safe Hold who named her. "Emerald's not a scyther name."

Ruby snorted. "You're not a wild scyther any more. You think Topaz is a pidgey name? The master's decided to call you Emerald and there's no point trying to argue with it." She opened her mouth to argue anyway. He cut her off. "Just deal with it. Now, I don't know about you, girls, but I'm hungry and I would like to eat my dinner without hearing a lot of whining." He sat down in front of his bowl and started to eat. Topaz and Citrine seemed to agree with him, as they found their bowls and started eating too. There was one bowl left. Long Claw's daughter didn't move.

After a little while Topaz looked up from her meal, which was already half gone; the pidgeotto ate fast. "You going to eat yours? I will, if you don't want it."

"Fine," the scyther said. "Go ahead."

"Don't mind if I do..." Topaz sidled around her bowl and closer to the extra.

Citrine - not Ruby, but the kindly Citrine - rounded on the pidgeotto, glowing more strongly than before. "Don't you dare!" she snapped. "Taking advantage of a child, you should be ashamed. And you," - she redirected her anger at the child in question - "you are not helping yourself in any way. Come here, and just bloody eat something!" Her cheek patches sparked.

"Ground yourself, Citrine," Ruby said calmly.

The raichu huffed and buried the tip of her tail in the ground. A pulse of electricity shot down her tail and dissipated in the earth. She relaxed. "Sorry. I'm not used to the charge buildup. I've just evolved. I mentioned that, didn't I?"

"You still can't eat Emerald's food, Topaz," Ruby said, seeing Topaz bolting the last few chunks of her meal with her eyes on the scyther's.

"She doesn't want it," Topaz grumbled.

Long Claw's daughter turned away and pretended they didn't exist. She didn't care, she didn't care, but the problem was she _was_ feeling hungry, and she couldn't bring herself to go and eat now. She didn't want their food, their name, their company. She wanted to go home. Her thoughts ran in circles over this same miserable ground until the human finished the meal it had been quietly eating.

"I'm going to go to bed... oh. Aren't you hungry, Emerald?" She extended her zone of pretended non-existance to the human. "Sure? Okay, you _have_ been in your pokeball."

"I'll eat it!" Topaz said, looking at the human, then at the food, then at the human, then at the food, her meaning clear even without words.

"Um..." the human said. "Oh, go on then. I suppose we shouldn't just waste it."

The ekans spoke for the first time. "You'll be too fat to fly, pidgeotto." Topaz made an indignant noise, but was otherwise too busy gorging herself to reply.

"Anyway," the human went on, "I'm going to bed. I probably shouldn't leave you out at night, Emerald, not for a little while, so..."

She didn't understand. She was being left out already, and that was fine, as she didn't want to be included. The human took something off its belt, there was a sudden flood of light, whiting out everything, and -

The darkness was soft and comforting. There had been something... important? No. If it was, she would remember.


	3. Others

**Others**

_Female scyther are territorial and almost never leave their territory. Male scyther, on the other hand, are nomadic, visiting many clans' territories and never staying long. The females tolerate them only as long as they have to._

The third day dawned, and the scyther were off and running again. In the early afternoon, they saw another scyther ahead. He saw them too, and was waiting.

"Care to dance, ladies?" he called once they were in earshot, and then recognised them. "Shining Blade, Long Claw? You're a long way from home, aren't you?"

They'd found the human's camp from the night before. The male was standing in the middle of it.

"Go away, Sure Dance," Long Claw growled.

"I'm not in _your_ territory," Sure Dance said. "What _are_ you doing out here?"

"Chasing a human," Long Claw said shortly. Now _go away_." The three younger scyther shared a look, then started to search the campsite, leaving Sure Dance to Long Claw.

He took a few steps back, but didn't leave. "Need any help with that?"

Shining Blade intervened before Long Claw could say something she'd regret to one of the clan's favourite males. "Thank you, but no, we prefer to handle it ourselves. It's... personal. If you-"

"Sharp Fang!" Smooth Stroke called. "There's blood here."

Sharp Fang darted to where Smooth Stroke indicated and crouched to sniff at the congealed spots. "It's scyther," she said. "It's prob-"

"Woah!" Sure Dance exclaimed as Long Claw shoved past him and started running again. Shining Blade growled under her breath and took off after her. The others followed them.

Smooth Stroke lingered. "Sorry we couldn't stay. Um... maybe on the way back?"

Sure Dance gave her a wink. "I'll be waiting, gorgeous."

She nodded and was gone.

* * *

Shining Blade was trying to calm Long Claw down. "We knew she was hurt. This doesn't change anything. Slow _down_, you can't keep up this speed all day."

"It was only a few drops," Sharp Fang put in. "If she was... you know... badly injured, there'd be more."

"What if we find her just a little bit too late?" Long Claw said, but she slowed to a sustainable speed. Smooth Stroke caught up, and didn't say why she'd fallen behind. They kept running.

Up until now, the terrain had been fairly flat. There was the occasional rise or dip, but mostly the landscape was level. An hour or so after they left Sure Dance, it changed. The smoothness gave way to a mess of little hills and valleys, as though someone had crammed too much geography into not enough area. The younger scyther were delighted by the novelty and found it highly amusing. The older two didn't like it. Even from the top of a hillock, the innumerable valleys scattered around it provided perfect hiding places, and the forest, its edge now more uneven than ever, filling valleys and carpeting random hillsides with trees didn't help visibility. "The human could be _right there_ and we wouldn't see them!" Long Claw complained. They were forced to spread out, just in case, which made them more vulnerable to attack. For once, everyone was happy when darkness fell and they had to stop for the night.

Ruby was used to his pokeball, and being sent in and out of it didn't disconcert him at all any more. For the last few days, he'd been spending a lot of time in it.

It was evening again, which meant they'd spent the whole day flying... again. Poor Topaz. She wouldn't let it show, but it had to be wearing her out.

"Can you light the fire for me, Ruby?" the master said. It had scrounged up a small pile of firewood, not really enough to get through the night, but not bad considering that - as Ruby looked around and saw - there weren't many trees around. "We'll just have a little fire," it added. "I'll get dinner ready."

Ruby set up a campfire, carefully scorching a bare patch in the grass and stomping out any wandering embers, scratching out a shallow pit, dragging one of the smaller branches into it and bathing it in flame until it finally caught. The familiar flashes of light behind him heralded the appearance of his fellow pokemon. Ruby practiced his metal claw technique and reduced the larger bits of wood to more conveniently-sized pieces. That done, he found the bowl of food the master had set out for him, next to Citrine, and started to eat.

The new scyther was standing off by herself. Citrine was watching her carefully, but Ruby didn't think she'd try to run off again. The master was trying to convince her to eat. "We're going to be training tomorrow, you'll need the energy."

"I don't want your stupid training!" Emerald snapped. "I don't want to be part if your _team_. I want to _go home!_"

The master understood the tone if not the words. "Why don't you _try_ to be happy?" it pleaded. "The others aren't so angry all the time."

"I was very happy!" Emerald wailed. "And then you ccame along! But you're too stupid to even-"

"Oh, for goodness' sake." Thyst, it seemed, had been annoyed enough to interrupt. "Poor little you. You think you're the only one who's ever been caught? We were all of us wild, and we're doing just fine now. We don't spend all our time sulking. You're supposed to be a scyther, aren't you? Stop behaving like a hatchling and _act_ like one!"

"What he said," Topaz mumbled, almost inaudibly.

Emerald stared at the ekans. She opened her mouth, closed it again. Finally she stomped past the human to her bowl and began eating.

"Good," Thyst hissed. "And if you throw another tanty like that, I'll eat you." He bared his sharp little fangs at her for a second and slithered away, leaving her looking after him nervously.

"He wouldn't really," Ruby said, in the interest of team harmony.

"Probably not, anyway," Topaz added. Citrine gave her an admonishing look, and she shrugged her wings. "Just sayin'."

Emerald went back to eating, as did Ruby, and by the time he'd finished she had too. "Good girl," the maser said happily. "I still think I should recall you overnight, okay? I'll let you out in the morning." Emerald turned her head to look at it but didn't otherwise respond. It recalled her, happy that if she wasn't being positive, she at least wasn't being negative.

"Silly bug," Topaz said scornfully when Emerald had disappeared. "She doesn't know how good she's got it."

"She doesn't," Citrine said. "Be patient with her, Topaz."

Topaz ruffled her feathers but didn't say any more, just tucked her head under her wing and dozed off. Citrine snuggled up next to the human in its sleeping bag and they fell asleep too. Ruby sat watching the fire; he wasn't tired, he hadn't been out of his pokeball since the night before. The human's quiet snores were soothing: it was safe when it was asleep with all its pokemon around it, and Ruby's main concern was keeping the master safe. The wood in the fire broke into coals, sending sparks dancing into the air, and Ruby saw a pair of eyes glittering. Thyst too was still awake.

"She'll be trouble, that scyther," the ekans said quietly.

"That's not your problem," Ruby said sharply, turning away and lying down. Thyst didn't press the issue, and the charmeleon found that he could sleep after all.

* * *

_**Author's Note: This chapter is shorter. It is shorter because, as the interested among you may have noted, I am dividing the chapters by day, and not much happened today. Next chapter will be longer, because more stuff gets done.**_


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